Monday 1/16/17
I was playing Call of Duty online this weekend and I heard some disturbing comments Basically, when online you hear a lot of trash talk by middle schoolers who play the game. Many people use the c word, the b word, and the p word quite often. What is irksome bout this is that the worst insult they can hurl at another man online is a derogatory term inferring they are women.
Monday 1/23/17
We were doing an exercise in class the other day. Essentially, our teacher gave us a series of events that lead to a woman's murder at the hand of a back-alley mugger who wanted her wallet. So, the point of this was to discuss who was most at fault for this woman's death, and rate it. The options were her husband who beat her, the guy who stabbed her, her herself, or two or three other middlemen in the story (who don't matter for this purpose). Anyways, one student raised his hand and said that he blamed the woman herself. He said that she should have just been happy that he was "bringing home the bacon." Nothing was mentioned of his income whatsoever. And he beat her. The teacher, the students, and myself were all astounded.
Monday 1/30/17
I recall an instance over winter break when I was in Busch Gardens. There was a line for the trolley at the end of the night. A man of Middle-Eastern descent and his little daughter was next in line to get on but got cut by another man. This caused a little dispute ending with the cutter remaining in the seat. The group of people I was next to were my age, and under his to his friends, one of the guys said,"watch out, or I'll blow you up" imitating a shrewd derogatory middle eastern accent. His friends thought it was funny...however, this furthers the hate mongering and Islamophobia that seems to be so prominent in our society today. Truly sad.
Monday 2/6/17
There has been a lot of discussion in the news about the travel ban involving Muslim countries. I have heard a lot of racist comments and seen racist memes involving this policy.
Wednesday 2/15/17
In contrast to the multiple negative pieces of diversity news, I saw something quite positive today. The 115th Congress has set a new high for diversity among its members. According to this article, around 20% of the House and Senate are of some racial or ethnic minority. This is a positive change and hopefully the momentum keeps up.
Source: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/01/24/115th-congress-sets-new-high-for-racial-ethnic-diversity \
Wednesday 2/22/17
I was at Zaxby's with my girlfriend and she was treating me to lunch. So, my girlfriend hands the cashier some cash, and once he has the change ready he looks at me and hands me the change back.
Monday 2/27/17
This isn't the most recent article, but I came across it and it grabbed my attention. The article discusses a Coca Cola ad that many claim to be racist. The commercial consists of some white teenagers doing good deeds and attempting to bring the beverage to Oaxaca, Mexico. Coca explained they were attempting to convey unity and joy, but the backlash continued and they pulled the ad eventually.
Source: http://www.theblaze.com/news/2015/12/08/coca-cola-yanks-new-racist-christmas-ad-featuring-white-teenagers-doing-good-deeds/
Monday 3/6/17
So, I have a cousin who was recently arrested for drug possession. He has always been a good guy, but has fallen on some hard times and decided to mule drugs from California to make some money. So, the problem here? Well he is Mexican, and was travelling with another Hispanic man. They got pulled over while going 6 miles per hour over the speed limit. Six. After appearing to let them slide on this, the cop asked if they were doing anything illegal, and they replied no. Then the officer said too bad, the drug sniffing dogs are already on the way. Hearing this story, I could see very blatant racial profiling. I mean, my cousin was in the wrong, but those officers saw two Hispanic males and automatically assumed the worst.
Monday 3/13/17
This article deals with the "Day Without Women" movement. The movement involves women not showing up for a day of work to show how important they are in the workplace. The writer insists that this movement does not advance women's rights by any means. She claims that the way for women to be respected is to show up to work, and bring their ideas and strategies. I can see both sides of this. For one, it doesn't look good to just not show up to work, however, something needs to be done about the inequality, and people need to see how truly women are in the workplace. There are probably better ways to do this though.
Source: https://www.usnews.com/opinion/civil-wars/articles/2017-03-08/the-day-without-a-woman-strike-isnt-real-activism
Sunday 3/26/17
As related to our discussion in class on Wednesday, I found an article about cultural appropriation. The writer discusses how she has dealt with many accounts of cultural appropriation, but has never felt the need to be violent about it. However, a women named Carmen Figueroa was driven to this, the writer says. A visiting basketball team was wearing braids that Carmen asked them to remove, and they did not. So, she ended up fighting them and getting charged with assault and battery. The writer then goes on to condemn this violence, explaining it is not the way to fight cultural appropriation. http://www.refinery29.com/2017/03/146935/cultural-appropriation-braids-student-assault-response
Monday 4/3/17
This is an update on a previous entry from 3/6/17. So, after the arrest, there are multiple hearings and such, all located in Texas, where this happened; so, they have to drive there. My cousin’s father, a Puerto Rican, drove him there. On the way, they were stopped by police. The officers actually put my uncle in handcuffs. Based on his race. And the other officer was verbally roughing up my cousin, yelling at him to stay in the car, threatening action by placing his hand on his pistol. There was NOTHING in that car and they did nothing wrong. If this isn’t racial profiling, I don’t know what is. They eventually had to let them go.
Monday 4/10/17
This article gave me insight into a website that I didn’t know existed, and that I find kind of disturbing. The name of the website is Stormfront. It’s a forum where any “white nationalists/supremists” or neo-nazis gather to discuss all things regarding their “racial superiority”. Supposedly it was one of the first and biggest hate sites on the internet. This specific article discusses a thread where one user asks for video game recommendations. Essentially, the discussion unfolds into a casual conversation about different games with white lead characters. One user commented, regarding a game that has mostly white characters in it: “I feel like a happy person again looking at this game and knowing there's still some people in the game developer industry that respects white players.” And this is just a run-of-the-mill comment, with very little reaction from either side on the site. The whole thing I found to be a little sickening. I wish there were some way to destroy this site, but I suppose they are doing nothing illegal.
Tuesday 4/18/17
This article was interesting because it describes the work of a woman, Fritz, who fights for diversity in the public school system of Birmingham, AL. She, along with her partner, is raising an Ethiopian son, multiracial twins, and a biracial daughter. So, diversity is very important to her. There is a meeting coming up in which she will discuss diversity issues with other community leaders and the public school system. She claims that the district is actually doing very well along the lines of diversity, probably due to the high education standards of the area. Many times we just talk about diversity, but it was interesting to hear about people who actively invest themselves into making their community more diverse.
I was playing Call of Duty online this weekend and I heard some disturbing comments Basically, when online you hear a lot of trash talk by middle schoolers who play the game. Many people use the c word, the b word, and the p word quite often. What is irksome bout this is that the worst insult they can hurl at another man online is a derogatory term inferring they are women.
Monday 1/23/17
We were doing an exercise in class the other day. Essentially, our teacher gave us a series of events that lead to a woman's murder at the hand of a back-alley mugger who wanted her wallet. So, the point of this was to discuss who was most at fault for this woman's death, and rate it. The options were her husband who beat her, the guy who stabbed her, her herself, or two or three other middlemen in the story (who don't matter for this purpose). Anyways, one student raised his hand and said that he blamed the woman herself. He said that she should have just been happy that he was "bringing home the bacon." Nothing was mentioned of his income whatsoever. And he beat her. The teacher, the students, and myself were all astounded.
Monday 1/30/17
I recall an instance over winter break when I was in Busch Gardens. There was a line for the trolley at the end of the night. A man of Middle-Eastern descent and his little daughter was next in line to get on but got cut by another man. This caused a little dispute ending with the cutter remaining in the seat. The group of people I was next to were my age, and under his to his friends, one of the guys said,"watch out, or I'll blow you up" imitating a shrewd derogatory middle eastern accent. His friends thought it was funny...however, this furthers the hate mongering and Islamophobia that seems to be so prominent in our society today. Truly sad.
Monday 2/6/17
There has been a lot of discussion in the news about the travel ban involving Muslim countries. I have heard a lot of racist comments and seen racist memes involving this policy.
Wednesday 2/15/17
In contrast to the multiple negative pieces of diversity news, I saw something quite positive today. The 115th Congress has set a new high for diversity among its members. According to this article, around 20% of the House and Senate are of some racial or ethnic minority. This is a positive change and hopefully the momentum keeps up.
Source:
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/01/24/115th-congress-sets-new-high-for-racial-ethnic-diversity \
Wednesday 2/22/17
I was at Zaxby's with my girlfriend and she was treating me to lunch. So, my girlfriend hands the cashier some cash, and once he has the change ready he looks at me and hands me the change back.
Monday 2/27/17
This isn't the most recent article, but I came across it and it grabbed my attention. The article discusses a Coca Cola ad that many claim to be racist. The commercial consists of some white teenagers doing good deeds and attempting to bring the beverage to Oaxaca, Mexico. Coca explained they were attempting to convey unity and joy, but the backlash continued and they pulled the ad eventually.
Source:
http://www.theblaze.com/news/2015/12/08/coca-cola-yanks-new-racist-christmas-ad-featuring-white-teenagers-doing-good-deeds/
Monday 3/6/17
So, I have a cousin who was recently arrested for drug possession. He has always been a good guy, but has fallen on some hard times and decided to mule drugs from California to make some money. So, the problem here? Well he is Mexican, and was travelling with another Hispanic man. They got pulled over while going 6 miles per hour over the speed limit. Six. After appearing to let them slide on this, the cop asked if they were doing anything illegal, and they replied no. Then the officer said too bad, the drug sniffing dogs are already on the way. Hearing this story, I could see very blatant racial profiling. I mean, my cousin was in the wrong, but those officers saw two Hispanic males and automatically assumed the worst.
Monday 3/13/17
This article deals with the "Day Without Women" movement. The movement involves women not showing up for a day of work to show how important they are in the workplace. The writer insists that this movement does not advance women's rights by any means. She claims that the way for women to be respected is to show up to work, and bring their ideas and strategies. I can see both sides of this. For one, it doesn't look good to just not show up to work, however, something needs to be done about the inequality, and people need to see how truly women are in the workplace. There are probably better ways to do this though.
Source:
https://www.usnews.com/opinion/civil-wars/articles/2017-03-08/the-day-without-a-woman-strike-isnt-real-activism
Thursday 3/24/17
This article explains how a bill in Gwinnett County, Georgia is adding two new seats to its education board. Rep. Pedro Marin introduced the bill in order to bring more diversity to the board, which is entirely white at the moment. News like this is nice to hear when the media is constantly flooded with negative news.
Source:
http://www.ajc.com/news/local-education/bill-aims-add-gwinnett-school-board-members-add-racial-diversity/k8Lz5HfMWkEWVXXsGXxftO/
Sunday 3/26/17
As related to our discussion in class on Wednesday, I found an article about cultural appropriation. The writer discusses how she has dealt with many accounts of cultural appropriation, but has never felt the need to be violent about it. However, a women named Carmen Figueroa was driven to this, the writer says. A visiting basketball team was wearing braids that Carmen asked them to remove, and they did not. So, she ended up fighting them and getting charged with assault and battery. The writer then goes on to condemn this violence, explaining it is not the way to fight cultural appropriation.
http://www.refinery29.com/2017/03/146935/cultural-appropriation-braids-student-assault-response
Monday 4/3/17
This is an update on a previous entry from 3/6/17. So, after the arrest, there are multiple hearings and such, all located in Texas, where this happened; so, they have to drive there. My cousin’s father, a Puerto Rican, drove him there. On the way, they were stopped by police. The officers actually put my uncle in handcuffs. Based on his race. And the other officer was verbally roughing up my cousin, yelling at him to stay in the car, threatening action by placing his hand on his pistol. There was NOTHING in that car and they did nothing wrong. If this isn’t racial profiling, I don’t know what is. They eventually had to let them go.
Monday 4/10/17
This article gave me insight into a website that I didn’t know existed, and that I find kind of disturbing. The name of the website is Stormfront. It’s a forum where any “white nationalists/supremists” or neo-nazis gather to discuss all things regarding their “racial superiority”. Supposedly it was one of the first and biggest hate sites on the internet. This specific article discusses a thread where one user asks for video game recommendations. Essentially, the discussion unfolds into a casual conversation about different games with white lead characters. One user commented, regarding a game that has mostly white characters in it: “I feel like a happy person again looking at this game and knowing there's still some people in the game developer industry that respects white players.” And this is just a run-of-the-mill comment, with very little reaction from either side on the site. The whole thing I found to be a little sickening. I wish there were some way to destroy this site, but I suppose they are doing nothing illegal.
https://mic.com/articles/172681/inside-the-neo-nazi-forum-where-white-nationalists-talk-about-their-favorite-video-games#.g7RnOngln
Tuesday 4/18/17
This article was interesting because it describes the work of a woman, Fritz, who fights for diversity in the public school system of Birmingham, AL. She, along with her partner, is raising an Ethiopian son, multiracial twins, and a biracial daughter. So, diversity is very important to her. There is a meeting coming up in which she will discuss diversity issues with other community leaders and the public school system. She claims that the district is actually doing very well along the lines of diversity, probably due to the high education standards of the area. Many times we just talk about diversity, but it was interesting to hear about people who actively invest themselves into making their community more diverse.
http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/oakland/2017/04/17/birmingham-schools-diversity-issues/100574488/